Manufacture Complete Car Tanks With Inner Workings

For children and amateurs, it is always a mystery how the ship models fit into the narrow bottle neck of bottle ships. This is primarily about the dexterity of individual artisans. Components that are larger than the filler neck are also integrated in modern car tanks. But this is not about individual dexterity, but about reproducible just-in-time series production. During the blow molding process, valves, lines, sensors and other components must be integrated directly into the resulting tank.

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Automation from a single source

With a very small, highly qualified internal team, Ulf Riehm, Manager Machine Construction at TI Automotive, developed a tailor-made blow molding system for its own plants in Europe, Asia and America from 2013. The decisive challenge was the automation of the system. Because it has to regulate the motion profile for the blow molding machines, position, speed and forces of the hydraulic axes in conjunction with parallel functions of the machine. "First of all, we looked intensively at the market in search of a reliable hydraulic axis controller and looked at all relevant suppliers," recalls Ulf Riehm. Bosch Rexroth quickly moved into the narrowest selection with the scalable range of motion controllers for hydraulic axes."In the course of the in-depth discussions, we decided on a complete solution with the Indramotion MLC control system, hydraulics, converters and motors, as well as linear technology, as offered by Rexroth."

Predefined controllers facilitate engineering

Blow molding machines are a special application. TI Automotive therefore wanted to program the application itself because of the know-how protection. Here the automation solution from Rexroth reduced the effort. Predefined best-in-class controllers for hydraulic functions are already integrated in the motion logic system. They automatically take into account the peculiarities of fluid technology and significantly reduce engineering effort. Simple parameterization is sufficient for many hydraulic functions.

The Indramotion MLC motion logic system uses consistently open standards such as programming according to Codesys and the real-time Ethernet automation bus Sercos. The system offers enough performance reserves to take over the entire process control of the blow molding system. In the TAPT system (Tank Advanced Process Technology) developed by TI Automotive, the blow molding preforms are divided in half while a robot deposits the tank system components in them. Only then does the form close. As with a bottle ship, objects that are much larger than the small openings inside the tank are then placed.

A few mouse clicks are enough to switch between the individual tank variants. "We worked very closely with the specialists from Rexroth during the entire engineering phase, who gave us intensive support with blow molding expertise and automation know-how," emphasizes Ulf Riehm.

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